By Agba Jalingo

The desperation to get basic needs like food, housing, education, health, financial and physical security are some of the most pressing problems drawing the masses to religious houses in Nigeria.

There are also the emotional challenges relating to relationships, mental and mind fitness. Little do many go to those places because they just want to go and worship God.

When congregants are requested to write their prayers requests and drop for supplications, we see the heaps of papers that are piled before the preachers to lay their hands and make proclamations.

They are mostly mountains of basic needs that a responsive and effective government with functional systems can effectively address.

In countries where systems are working, where leadership is responsive and responsible, most of those heaps of prayer requests will be before relevant people in government who have the duty to address those problems promptly and not before any man of God.

Nations have developed cradle-to-grave welfare systems for their citizens to ensure quality life, eradicate desperation among citizens and curb violent crimes.

Housing, education of your kids, health, water, holidays, security, unemployment allowance, and even food stamps for the needy, are all provided for by the government and citizens don’t have to go bothering any so called “man of God” to lay hands and get any of those things done.

You will have noticed that once you travel and resettle oversea, your prayer points also change automatically, particularly when you become a citizen of that country. Most of the things you pray for here are provided by their government over there.

I’m just trying to tell you that, it is not your fasting and all night prayer and blabbing in tongues or shouting a foreign language in the mosque, or chanting incantations in a shrine, that will change Nigeria.

Until we all collectively make up our minds to hold our leaders accountable and insist that they must give us what we deserve, our supplications will be in perpetual vain.

Those who are doing so now and taking all the weeps are not crazy. They just want a better country and it begins by voting in conscientious people with a track record of service to our communities and 2023 presents that opportunity.

Let’s not miss it!

Citizen Agba Jalingo is a citizen journalist, human rights activist and an entrepreneur.

Source: StreetReporters.ng